Sermon: St. Johns 2021

John Prepares the Way to the New

Gospel Reading: Mark 1:1-11

Dear Community of Christians,

John the Baptist is an outstanding personality. He is firmly rooted in the Jewish spiritual stream. With the intensive observance of the laws, the Jewish people and nation became very strong. We can still see this iron adherence to the Jewish law, which lacks compassion and understanding for others who does not come from their worldview.

John the Baptist carries this in his personality and he was just as strict and sharp with his wake-up call. Was this extreme what woke him up for what was needed to come? Out of this he suspected, at the same time, the old, the no longer contemporary, must create space for an upcoming new. Then he grabbed hold of his task and destiny.  So, the Baptist, the forerunner, became the distributor of the new.

But in order to seek the future, people had to find him. In order to hear about the new, they have to seek him out.

With our intellectual-materialistic thinking we have become strong and rich as individuals and as a nation. However, it is clear and not to be overlooked that our economic and scientific system is used-up. Yet old forces are still at work that perpetuate this system.

Who now shows the way to the new? Since more than 100 years the initiate saw the need to bring the new into the world. But like then, few found him or even heard of his new impulses.

This newness, announced by John the Baptist came into the world with the Baptism of Christ. But even until today the new, with its compassion, love and understanding for others was grasped by only a small part of humanity.

How long must we wait until even a small part of humanity grasps the new; a new impulse and era as the urgent need for the development of future civilization.  

Rev. Ute Koenig

St. John the Baptist Preaching in the Wilderness by Anton Raphael Mengs